Times Higher Education

Not this summer but the last I worked at Van Pelt Library and every morning I was charge of collecting the periodicals that needed to be cataloged for the library. One of these magazines was Times Higher Education. Anyway, one day, I decided to look up the magazine since we got often and wanted to see what they are all about. So I looked them up online and noticed that they ranked the best universities in the world. Currently, the University of Pennsylvania is #11, but the school that I am at as I type this (University College of London) is #7. However, the school that I visited Monday (Cambridge) is #3, right behind Harvard then Yale.

Getting to the main topic of the post, Cambridge was pretty cool. I enjoyed it a lot. The previous week and up to that point (and even a little now) I was coming over a cold and pretty nasty cough. I decided to go anyway, especially since I had nothing better to do and I just finished up with classes the week before. Here are some of the pictures from the trip:

All the bikes at the train station, it definitely rivals Amsterdam for bike capital of the world.

I went Vincent, better known as Tiger. Another Penn person. Here he is here holding the nose of a bear that we found.

King's College.

The inside.

Trinity College.

Trinity College's chapel. It should be noted that every college there had its own chapel. Trinity College is where Newton did his thing.

Cambridge was a pretty quant town.

Well those were the pictures from my Cambridge trip. I hoped you enjoyed. Coming up next: Paris, Round 2.

An American Thanksgiving in London & Winter Wonderland

Luckily there was good food and no werewolves.

For the most holiest of holy food days, a bunch of us from UCL went over to Goldsmith's College to eat a lovely meal. Although no turkey, the day was still a blast, especially because of the corn. The day was not the same without the family and the fact that I had class earlier in the day was quite odd.

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Another large ferris wheel in London, man try a new idea....

That weekend, a bunch of us went to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. It was reminscint of Oktoberfest (German Beer & Sausage, roller coasters and cheap souvenirs, less drunk people though), but it had its own twist; in the fact there was a ice rink! We went skating (11 pounds! for the hour) in the great weather of London (on-n-off showers/drizzle).

Here is the rink (with blue lights, obviously).

The group who went from left to right: Rachel, Me, Laura (Rachel's friend from home who is studying in Paris), Sami, and Dale.

Its harder than it looks to take a picture when you are skating.

Sami and I were the expert skaters of the group (we both play hockey). Here is us showing off our "skills."

The Haunted House of Christmas.

Sami posing in front of the Haunted House of Christmas with Scrooge.

Rachel with Frosty.

So this will be my last post until I do something really exciting. Unfortunately, I am not really traveling after classes are done (December 12), except for a few day trips and two days in Paris. So expect a post within the coming weeks.

Edinburgh, etc.

Although my dad was here for only a few days, we still "had time" to travel. And since all of my friends told me great things about Edinburgh, I thought this was the place to go. With less than a week before he came, I booked train tickets and a hotel and the day after he arrived we were off to the land of the Scots (aka Scotland).

NOTE: the day before we went, we went to Maze Grill (a Gordon Ramsey restaurant) and it was a great dinner. I just thought I should make some sort of mention of such a great dinner.

After a little runaround about passports and train stations, we made it on to the train on time and found two seats next to each other. I was reading for one of my classes while my father was working on a Christmas present. I would say it was a pretty productive train ride. Once we got to the hotel, which was a stone throws away from the train station, and checked in, we decided to get some food. We decided to walk to Old Town which was across the valley for lunch.

Here is the Scottish memorial, which was right across the street from our hotel. There was also a Ferris wheel right next to it since they were setting up for their Winter wonder Land, a carnival thing for Christmas. London's is in Hyde Park.

Castle of Edinburgh, which ended up visiting the next day.

Here is the street we ate lunch at.

After eating a good meal at the Arcade Bar we decided to take a Bus tour of the town to see which things we should visit the next day. Little did we know that the temperature would get very cold and uncomfortable.

Me enjoying the bus ride. Also, my dad took his very Nikon so most of the really good pictures are on there.

Here is a picture of the Castle from our Bus tour.

Once we got off the terribly cold bus tour and defrosted in our room, we made a pit stop at H&M so my dad who did not compensate for the cold weather could make some much necessary purchases to make up for his lack of layers. After the pit stop, we walked across to the Old Town again for dinner. We ended up getting dinner at this really good Italian restaurant. Afterwards we back to the pub where we went for lunch for some drinks (some aged Scottish whiskey and pints). Sticking to tradition, we played Rummy 500 where he beat me multiple times. Once I got tired of losing we went back to the hotel for some rest.

After waking up at 10am the next morning and getting breakfast at this chocolate shop, we headed off to the castle.

Here is the castle from the end of the Royal Mile.

My dad in front of the Castle.

View from the base of the Castle.

After waiting for about a half an hour for tickets, we made our journey to the top. Here a some of the pictures that we took:

View from one side of the Castle.

View from the steep climb up.

Me trying to pick up a huge cannon ball (unsuccessful).

War Memorial (I think).

View from outside one of the canons near the top.

A lion in front of the memorial.

After making our way down from the Castle and getting some souvenirs, we ate at this place called Deacon Brodie's, which is named after the inspiration for Dr. Jekyll. Here is the wiki link: Deacon Brodie. Lunch was done and so was our short trip.

Once getting our luggage and getting to our train, I finished my reading and we had a little rematch of Rummy 500 (I won both games). Although short, Edinburgh was a great and beautiful.

The next day we went to the Tower of London and then ended up doing a bus tour of London since it was raining. I didn't take any pictures with my camera so it will not be too exciting, therefore I will keep it short and sweet.

Lunch @ Harrods: Great!
Dinner @ the Sports bar: Great!
Watching the Eagles at the sports bar with my dad while having a drink: Great!
Watching the Eagles suck: Terrible!
Spending time with my dad for a few short days in London & Edinburgh: Priceless...

Straphangers and Tubes

Two days before my Dad came, Rachel and I decided to do something that we always wanted to do, go to the London Transport Museum. Being Urban Studies majors, with an interest in city planning, a museum like this was a great experience. Here are some photos from our trip:

The first public transport systems in London were these carriages pulled by horses. This is one of the earliest "double deckers."

At the start of "our trip through time," they gave us a "ticket" which we "had" to get it stamped at these "stations."

Me hanging onto a straphanger (the offical name of those things that hang down from buses, trains, etc.) in a old tube car.

Some cool map showing the Piccadilly line, northern and Bakerloo (I think).

A sweet tube advertisement that I will probably get a poster of.

Attempting to drive a underground train (its harder than it looks!).

Well, that was a quick summary of our URBS museum trip. Next, Edinburgh!

Arsenal

Last Tuesday, me and two other Penn people (Dale and Tiger) went to our first official football game, Arsenal vs. Wigen Athletic. It was really cool and fun, even though our seats were the third from last row of the stadium. The stadium was beautiful and only a few years old. Here are some of the pictures from the night:

Here is the outside of the new stadium where Arsenal plays (obvi).

Here is Dale with his Arsenal scarf. BTW, we all ended up getting different ones as souvenirs.

The two teams lining up before they shook hands.

Right after the second goal.

A sweet picture of the roof/rest of the stadium.

Another.

The three of us.

So Arsenal ended up winning the game 3-nil. On the tube ride back everyone was singing. Good times.

This weekend my father is coming to visit and we are going to Edinburgh, look out for a post sometime next week.

Ye Auld Dub

On the same day that my mom left, me and Sami went on our own little trip to our neighbor next door, Ireland. After talking with our friends that already went, we heard that Dublin didn't seem too special, but we were still determined to make it great trip. Once we got to our hostel, we decided to go explore the city centre and see what the town truly had to offer. Here is Sami near the river Liffey:
After checking out the O'Connell Bridge and O'Connell Street, we headed to our first Irish pub, where I tried some famous Irish Whiskey:

After a drink or two, we left and we went down to Trinity College (1592) via the Ha'Penny Bridge. Although it was dark by this point, the campus was still pretty. Here are a few that I took on the last day during the daytime:
Another shot:Later that night, we headed down to the Temple Bar area, the nightlife area of Dublin. It was pretty fun, nothing special though. Actually, the only thing special was the price. It turns out that Dublin is a VERY expensive city, the same as London pretty much, maybe even more.

The next day we went down to the shopping district around O'Connell Bridge and made a few purchases; Sami got boots and I got a nice sweater. After our shopping, we did a little sight seeing on our way to the Guinness Store House.

Here is Dublin Castle (1204).

The Spire (2003).

Christ's Church (1171).

After a lot of walking we made it to the Guinness Store House:

Once inside, we learned about how to make beer and why Guinness is so special. And at the end we both enjoyed a complimentary pint that we pulled from the tap ourselves:

Here is Sami with her's.

Also, at the end of the "tour" we saw the 9000 (nine thousand!!) year lease that Arthur Guinness has at St. James' Gate in Dublin. Only 8751 years to go!

The next day, we didn't have too much time before we had to go back to the airport for our flight so we decided to check out Trinity College in the daytime, get lunch near Grafton Street and check out St. Stephen's Green (1663). The park was very pretty. Here are some pictures:

After picking up our luggage from the Hostel, we caught the bus back to the airport. Luckily we got the front row seats on the top of the double decker. This is the last image that I have of Dub:
Well, I think I got you guys all caught up now with three blogs in the last three hours. Anyway, the next few weeks I have a lot of school to catch up on so I don't know how many more blogs I will be doing, since I will not be traveling that much. Although, now that I think about it, I am going an Arsenal Game Tuesday, so I will try to do one on that at some point during the week. Hope you enjoyed!